AaaaaaaaaaaRRRRRGH

[yvannairie]

Nothing inspires homicidal rage quite like two inches of fresh snow and A 100 KG DELIVERY BIKE GETTING STUCK IN IT

EDIT: context for this post -- my shift had ended over an hour ago and I had just gotten up to where the Really Shitty(tm) part of my current route starts, and it was still snowing, and there were no plows in sight so there I was, pushing my still mostly full bike through a parking lot that hadn't been cleared yet.

You know how fresh snow gets after a few people have walked through it? Have you ever tried driving in it?

Fucking Christ.

Honestly just. Whatever. I couldn't give a fuck. At some point I somehow managed to mess up my J-letters, and I could care less. Did I misdeliver that card? Did I drop it? Did it just fucking vanish??? Who cares! I don't! If they wanted me to produce quality they should pay me more than 10€ an hour.

The only thing that kept me going was honestly just the thought that if I wanted, I could just... quit. Go home. RIP to my past self (what an idiot) who wanted to be thorough and wanted to do a good job, I'm different. By the time my overtime kicked in at 10hrs (by my calculations, at least -- I don't have guaranteed overtime unless I do 30hrs that week first) I wasn't even halfway done through the route and couldn't remember shit about what was coming next, despite having done the sorts myself.

I was home around 1830 and while I was standing in the kitchen making food, I just kept thinking "You know, Idiots like us are the reason they can afford to pay you like shit. Why didn't we just go home, man? What was even the point of that?"

Fucking serves me right for wanting to do my fucking job right, fuck.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Honestly I feel like that might actually happen sooner or later. We currently have a government that bills itself as pro-labour and pro-lower middle class, and we're also about to start a round of collective agreement negotiations acrss almost every economic sector. The driver's and operator's union, aviation union and seafarer's union also threatened to strike in solidarity, and some of them did actually join the strike towards the end and the postal worker's union is... well, actually, it's kinda broke rn b/c the strike was long and extremely extensive, but going on strike in support of the other unions in the same labour sector is absolutely still on the table.

The splintering of the labour market, a lack of long-term stability, bad pay and zero-hour contracts is becoming an issue everywhere. Eventually, there will be a strike that is about that, almost exclusively, which will help set a precedent. PAU is also up and suing the company that I'm currently employed with for having me on a different labour agreement than the workers employed directly by Posti OY and Posti Palvelut OY. If that suit goes through, that will also set a precedent and better the labour rights of workers like me, even if we still can't get proper contracts with the mother company.

[cimorene]

Wax was just saying the other day - when that other strike ended shortly after the postal one, but I can't remember what sector it is now; but it was on the front page - that it was probably related to the momentum from the postal strike and that we can possibly expect more things to happen from that. And then I saw the pro-labor stuff happening (and the youngest prime minister ever) too, so... that's actually hopeful too. I really hope something like this happens.

And being unemployed I really hope there's some kind of mass demonstrations because I want a way to personally support the unions, but I'm sure there are lots of other people in other sectors who feel the same.

[yvannairie]

I have such mixed feelings about our new prime minister, on the one hand I want her to succeed so badly and finally start shifting the generational makeup of our political system, but on the other hand I don't trust a lot of Finnish politics right now b/c it's gotten polarised to the point where changing your mind and shifting your platform needs to be done in a very gaslight-y "this is actually what we've always thought", instead of acknowledging that flawed methods can result in flawed conclusions.

That being said -- yeah. It is often said that labour unions are too strong in Finland, because they're capable of immobilising the economy on "a whim", and how labour strength shouldn't be used to exert political power, but what's conveniently left out of that assessment is that politics is constantly exerting power over labour. At some point, twisting the arm back is fair game.

[cimorene]

I mean, Wax used to be in the metal worker's union, which was fine, but now she works in phone customer service and like. The customer service union is in SUCH a bad position. I cannot BELIEVE a union lets the stuff by that she puts up with at this kind of pay. Like seriously??? And her job is still not as awful as yours.

But... yeah. I mean... I have a limited... not attention span, more like emotional spoons for politics? Which is still a lot compared tomany people though, and I do care about politics a lot. It's important to me to keep up, to a degree, with Finnish politics, but I've never been able to get in too much depth with it. And there's been a lot to get mad about over the years, but at the same time, it's always been less awful than what's going on in America and the world, and keeping up with American politics in more detail (I can still vote in their national elections and not Finland's until I pay the 300 bucks or whatever to apply for citizenship and I def. can't afford that right now...) and then world politics in like... even cursory detail... also takes a lot of brainpower. Obviously once I can vote I know I'm gonna have to pay more attention... and get more angry probably. But, like, I have a lot of anger at Finnish neoliberals for example, who can actually look at the current garbage fires in the US and UK or... anywhere really... and still think privatizing things and selling them off is a good idea (well they probably just want the money for their cronies and don't actually care if it's a good idea for other people, realistically)... but at the same time, a random Finnish neoliberal is usually gonna be more progressive than a prominent US Democrat. They're operating on completely different scales (except the racists and homophobes, of course, those are pretty similar everywhere).

[yvannairie]

Yeah, I get it. I mean, my folks voting Coalition year after year and being confused when them having decency and talking about how equality can't mean being equally tolerant of dumbassery nets them a constant stream of Green/Left Party ads was a big reason I was politically inactive pretty much until I got this job, and realised that Posti was never going to hire me fair and square b/c it was cheaper to keep me in an unstable temp position forever. Also, other fun life things.

I think Finland is in a really stressful position right now in the sense that things aren't "as bad as they could be"... yet. But things are getting worse and we're seeing how it looks everywhere else when things are bad. Finnish news media has also been getting better at covering human interests stories, but is still pretty bad at actually pointing out when progress is halted vs when actual gains are made.